


Lonely (but not when you hold me)

by redmorningstar



Series: lonely kids in space [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: A love Story, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Star Wars: The Last Jedi Spoilers, lonely kids in space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-24 07:29:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13208904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redmorningstar/pseuds/redmorningstar
Summary: It should have ended with the closing of the ship's door, Ben on his knees, and Rey shutting him out of her life forever.It should have been the end for them, but it wasn’t.---A love story about lonely kids in space. Where, against all her efforts, Rey can't help but be pulled into Ben's orbit.





	Lonely (but not when you hold me)

**Author's Note:**

> I never shipped Reylo before and then within a night of watching it TLJ, I knew I had to write this story about Rey and Ben Solo. Something about their relationship struck a chord with me, so I wrote about it. I hope others in the fandom can enjoy this little alternate path.
> 
> Title inspired by the song One of One by duendita.

It should have ended with the closing of the ship's door, Ben on his knees, and Rey shutting him out of her life forever. It should have been the end for them, but it wasn’t.

It was only a few scant days before she sensed him again and he appeared unbidden in her mind's eye. The gulf between them was more than empty space, it was a vacuum sucking all the air out of the room and pulling at them both.

"Go away," she said, hardly able to look at him. His eyes mocked her, reminding her of all that had been lost.

"I'll find you. No matter where you run across the galaxy, I'll find you. I won't stop.”

“Why won’t you leave me alone?” Rey wanted to wipe that implacable look off his face, to tear at him, to rage, to make him hurt. He shook his head at her, like she were a child.

“You haven't figured it out, have you? Your hate pulls me towards you. Because you don't reject it, even though you think you should. If you really wanted to, you could stop this.”

She turned away and closed her eyes, trying to block him out. She tried to focus on her own breathing and not his, but she didn't need to see him to know the look on his face.

-

Rey didn’t sleep much anymore. When she closed her eyes, scenes would replay under her eyelids; conversations and ‘what if’ scenarios haunted her. She didn’t know if the choices she had made were the right ones. She was starting to think that she would never know.

So instead of sleep she wandered the halls of their new base, taking stock of the entries and exits, the creepholes and the niches, things that would come in handy for a scavenger. It was oddly reassuring.

Some nights, she tried to meditate as Luke had taught her. She would close her eyes and try to sense the Force in all things, but that path would always lead her to Ben. Somehow he was always there, resonating clearer than anything else in the universe, even Leia who slept only a few doors away. She couldn’t get him out of her head and it was only getting easier every time to see his face.

Rey saw him now more than ever before. When it was late and no one was around, and the anxieties and worries she carried could no longer be kept at bay, Ben would appear. He never looked surprised anymore, not like the first time. They would talk or argue, and then a few minutes later he would be gone.

What she hated most was that, no matter what had been said, she always felt comforted. 

-

“I don’t hate you. I wish that I did. Things would be easier if I did.”

“I can help you, if you like. There’s plenty to hate me for.”

“I know. I’ve seen it all, remember?”

“That’s right, you have. If you still have hope I’ll turn, you should forget it. There’s too much blood on my hands to ever come back.”

“When we touched the first time, I saw a vision of you turning to the light. And you saw me turn to the dark. They can’t both be true, can they?”

“These visions don't always show the whole truth. Stoke, even before his death, saw what he wanted to see. The same could be said for us.”

Rey stayed silent. All she could think was that regardless of outcome, they had both seen a future where they had been together, side-by-side. She didn’t need to say it; she could see from the look on his face that he already knew.

Suddenly, she wanted to touch him again. He looked tired and sad and lonely and she wanted to hold his hand, because she understood those things better than anyone.

Sensing her intention, his lips parted in surprise. Watching her with dark eyes, he removed his gloves and held out his hand towards her wordlessly. Rey let her hand touch his, palm to palm, and felt a peace settle over her. The future she had seen was still there, just out of sight, but present. She felt a certainty deep in her bones that it would still hold true, that their futures weren’t destined to end in fire and blood, but together.

His hand was warm. For a long moment, she held it while he watched her, eyes unreadable.

After that, he never wore his gloves again. Whenever they saw each other, his hands were bare. It was an invitation that even Rey could recognise and it made her skin feel hot and tight.

She wished she knew how to stop feeling that way.

-

Rey held her breath, hoping fiercely that it would work. She pressed the activation plate on the hilt. A blade of pure energy erupted upward, casting her and her surroundings in a purple glow. After months of careful rebuilding, she finally held in her hands a complete lightsaber. She turned to Ben, elation and satisfaction thrumming in her veins.

“It worked!”

“Of course. I knew that it would.”

Rey cut the air experimentally, entranced by the play of purple energy. “This couldn’t have been possible without your help.”

“I simply gave you the guide to rebuild. That’s all.”

“You’ve given me much more, Ben, you know that.”

Suddenly she heard the ignition of Ben’s lightsaber and she turned to face him, startled. He held his lightsaber aloft, his stance at the ready.

“The only way to test a weapon is to use it, Rey.”

The air suddenly felt heavy with danger. Rey didn’t know if they could actually hurt each other through their connection, but she didn’t want to bet her life on it.

They circled each other warily. Her skin prickled. The last time they had faced each other had been in the forest when she had given him that scar; he had been wounded then, both in body and mind. The man who stood in front of her was different; she didn’t know if she could defeat him as he was now.

He moved first, cutting fast from above. She caught his strike with her lightsaber but the weight of his cut shocked her. She dodged to the side, letting his momentum carry him past her. She made to strike at his side, but he turned quickly and parried her; he had been expecting that. Over and over, their lightsabers connected making the air sizzle with energy, with neither side gaining the upper hand. As they fought, she caught his smile. It was small, like he was still trying to hide it, but it was present nonetheless. She realised, with no small amount of surprise, that Ben was enjoying himself. She was stunned by the thought, and that was all it took.

Ben slipped through her guard, knocking aside her lightsaber, and then his saber was at her throat. She didn’t dare breathe. He was close enough to kill her with a flick of his wrist, and for the briefest of moments, Rey was afraid that he would, because in many ways and to many people, they were still enemies.

Ben let his lightsaber go dark. Without his lightsaber threatening her, the tension in the air abruptly dissipated; instead he was simply holding her carefully, almost tender. Neither of them said a thing. This close she could see the scar on his face in detail, the raised tissue that would never be the same again. She reached up and traced the path of the scar with her fingertips. His eyes closed at her touch. In the forest she had called him a monster and had marked him forever with the force of her hate. In that moment he wasn’t a monster to her; he was simply a man.

-

Another close escape, another base abandoned to ruin.

Rey woke up in the infirmary, throat parched and eyes sealed shut with sleep. Her left side throbbed dully. When she tried to sit up, she found that she couldn’t. Looking down, she saw a new scar on her body, a blaster shot burn still red and angry with healing, but whole. 

It wasn’t long before Finn, Poe, Rose, and all the others were crowding her bedside. She had been shot, they explained. She passed out from blood loss and almost died, but the worst was over. She had been under sedation for the past three days. It was a lot to process but even after so much rest all she could feel was a bone deep tiredness.

A few hours later, she was cleared by the medical bot to return to her rooms with strict orders to rest. Alone in her room at last, Rey sat down on the bed and waited. It wasn’t long before he was there, face shadowed.

“Ben…” she began, but didn’t get to finish. She knew what was going to happen, she had already sensed it. They had been moving towards this for so long; it was inevitable, like gravity. She could have stopped him, if she wanted to.

She didn’t want to. 

He kissed her. With his bare hands framing her face, he kissed her, with a hunger and desperation that made her shiver. His mind reached out to hers and the storm of his emotions overtook her. Rey thought she would drown under the weight of all that Ben carried; it was too much.

Fear. Anger. Loneliness. Despair.

 _STOP_ , she thought and _pushed_ him back with her mind.

There was a momentary struggle and then the overwhelming presence of him shrank and retreated until all she could feel was the bitterness of his regret. Ben withdrew, face twisted with self-loathing, but Rey didn’t let him go. She pulled him back to her and kissed him once more, reaching out with her own being this time. His mind touched hers again, this time no longer a storm, but with a touch as tentative as their hands by the fire. She felt as he felt, could read his thoughts, his emotions; they layered upon her own, matching and mismatching like a distorted mirror.

 _He had/hadn’t wanted to drown her/possess her/overrun her. No, he_ had _wanted to/_ still _wanted to but he could keep it back, keep it in check, for her sake. He was afraid she had died. He had barely sensed her presence until this moment. He had thought she had died alone/that he had been left alone again._

And at the same time, he read her too.

_She had thought she was dead. At the time when she had been bleeding out, she had been afraid that it was the end. That at the end of it all, she hadn’t changed anything, that she was still nothing and nobody. She had thought of him and regretted not holding him/going to him/being with him at the end, that their future had been turned to nothing by her hands._

The intensity was almost too much to stand and at last they broke apart. When she looked into his eyes, she saw everything that she was and ever would be reflected there.

Inevitable.

His thumb stroked her cheek once, twice, and then he was gone.

\- 

She couldn’t reconcile the two: Kylo Ren, who chased the Rebellion across the galaxy with his hand outstretched ready to crush them all; Ben, who looked at her with a resonating loneliness and whose touch was so gentle, like he was afraid to break her.

She knew that it was wrong. Wrong to keep seeing him, to touch him, to feel whatever she felt for him, but she couldn’t let go and neither could he. They were stuck in a stalemate, unable to separate or draw close, fixed on opposite sides of the war and the galaxy.

“When does it end?” She asked him as she lay in his arms in the darkness of her room.

“When one of us is dead,” he said, not resolute or angry, just resigned. One of his hands brushed her hair softly with tenderness.

Rey couldn’t accept that that would be the way it ended for them. She was tired of fighting it, fighting him.

In this war, they could not be anything but weapons, diametrically opposed. But outside of it, perhaps they could be themselves.

-

“If I left the Rebellion and went somewhere where nobody knew us, what would you do?”

“What do you mean?”

“If we didn’t have to choose sides in this war, if we could go somewhere to just be ourselves, what would you do?” 

“Rey...”

“Tell me.”

“I would follow you to the ends of the universe.”

-

She slipped away in the night. They would find her bed empty in the morning and one of the light aircrafts gone, but they wouldn’t be able to track her, she made sure of that.

She entered the coordinates and let the ship take her to a planet where no one would know her. Space was vast and black and full of stars, but she didn’t feel alone. Soon she would be where she was meant to be.

-

In her hut in a small village in the middle of nowhere, she watched the snow fall. The snow blanketed the planet making it something softer, quieter. She liked it. This place would do as well as any.

Rey closed her eyes and summoned the shape of him to her mind's eye. She could see the threads of the Force tying them together so tightly that she could see his outline as clear as if he were there. She gave a tug. Then she stoked the fire, lay back, and waited.

Hours later and half asleep, she heard the door to her hut open and close. When she opened her eyes, Ben was standing in front of her, snow melting on his hair and cloak. 

“You’re really here.” she said. She hadn’t been able to shake the small part of her that thought he might not come.

He reached for her and she rose to meet him. Their hands touched; his hands were so cold that they burned. She didn’t care. He was _real_.

Rey kissed him and the tight ache in her chest loosened at last. Together, she saw their future once more; it made her breath catch and her heart full with longing. When she pulled back and saw the look on his face, full of wonder, she knew he had seen it too.

They would never be alone again.


End file.
